Re: Sorry

: : : Dear friends,
: : : I have a very unclear sentence, I hope you'll be able to help me. It concerns a passage from Genesis and its subject is the final form of this passage. I need only the sentence between stars ** (down below):
: : : "I shold stress that I do no regard an over-riding concern for the final form of the text as precluding acceptance of the possibility that some, if not much, of the material, has been incorporated into the final form largely because it has become traditional. We do not have to suppose final authors of our texts being actively engaged in the precise wording or arrangement of every part to their material; **Final form criticism - if it may be so designated - makes only the assumption of authorial intention in the end-redacors**, and authors obviously have many different styles of handling their material.

: : : Most unclear to me is the clause: if it may be so designated
: : : Many thanks
: : : miri

: : I don't understand it either. Two things:

: : 1. Could the word be redactor as in (from Merriam-Webster online):

: : Final form criticism - if it may be so designated - makes only the assumption of authorial intention -- in the end redactors and authors obviously have many different styles of handling their material.

: Hello ESC - you're a genius!
: Indeed it is redctors, from some obscure reason I assumed that it is end-redactors. obviously there isn't such an animal and your interpretation makes perfect sense.
: I translated "if it may be so designated" - if it can be so described", is it correct?
: and Just in case, though the passage makes more sense could you paraphrase it for me?

: and a bonus qusetion: the ending sentence of this paragraph is:
: "In the present case, I would argue that it makes effectively no difference whether the clause is present or not, so that its presence falls beneath the level of the author's intention."

: I understood the combination of "beneath the level of the author's intention" as a clause that escaped the author's intention. I'm not sure about it.
: and again thank you so much, it always amazes me how much help I get from you.

Thank you. But I don't think I can help untangle these sentences. The problem is, I don't know the subject matter well enough to figure out what the writer is saying. I tried to Google the terms without success. I wouldn't find, for example, "final form criticism." All I found was:

Final form
The final "edition" of any particular book.

Form criticism
An assessment of how particular, set literary structures (e.g. a hymn) function and the type of social setting where such literary forms would have originated in an effort better to perceive their intent.
http://imp.lss.wisc.edu/~rltroxel/Prophets/glossary.html#sectF